Your guide to the many types of chili paste

Not sure what type of chili paste to use in a recipe? Indexed
blog Food52 can help. They have put together an excellent primer on the many varieties of chili
paste. It turns out that there are dozens to choose from; you
just need to know the general type to make the right selection.

Chili paste can be simply chili peppers ground into a paste, or
it can mean a more complex seasoning base that has a few or many
additional ingredients. Food52 groups the sauces into five
categories: hot, fishy, spiced, fermented, or
sweet(ish). Since most chili pastes have some level of heat, when
they say hot, they mean fiery. These are the kinds of pastes that
give a real kick to food. Examples of this category
include Piros Arany, a Hungarian paste that is based on
paprika, and the Peruvian Salsa de Rocoto.

Many Southeast Asian sauces end up in the "fishy" category. Most
have a hint of fish flavor, mostly added for the umami that things
like shrimp paste can bring to a dish. Nam prik pao is one type of "fishy" chili
paste. The "spiced" category includes the more familiar harissa along with the Egyptian shatta
and adjika, which hails from the Caucus
region.

Fermented pastes like gochujang and sambal offer complex, earthy flavors.
Rounding out the list are the "sweet(ish)" sauces, and Food52
places sriracha in this category, noting that once
you "push past the heat, this chili
paste is indeed sweet."